By Ron Chandler, President of Conservation Initiative for the Asian Elephant

During her presentation at the 2010 Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) in Charleston, SC, Lily Yeh, cofounder of Barefoot Artists among other invaluable initiatives was asked, “How did you do that? Weren’t you afraid to go there, Weren’t you afraid to do that?”

The question came after Ms Yeh had shared her experience of first venturing into an inner-city area of North Philadelphia in 1989; an experience that would inspire her to restore the spirit of the people there and the place itself.

Ms Yey’s response, “I was afraid not to” revealed the essence of the psychology of sustainability; a courage informed by fear, and one that looks through it in order to serve the common good.

You may not be surprised that fear lies at the center of the most heinous acts of humankind, but surprised that the same is true regarding our most humanitarian efforts. Fear as well resides at the heart of each “small” selfish or generous decision made day to day. To help illustrate this I will use a question that I suspect you have asked and then draw from a remarkable field of psychological research known as Terror Management Theory (For a glimpse into TMT visit http://www.ernestbecker.org/).

I imagine that on more than one occasion either to yourself or to another person you have posed a question something like “Why do we do what we do to Earth and each other?” I also imagine that you have received responses including but not limited to “It is because we’re greedy”; “We’re evil”, “That’s what imperialists do”, and “We want to dominate rather than abide by Nature”.

Greed, imperialism, aggression, and domination are so prevalent and their impacts so sweeping that it is easy to think of these as causes; it was for me. But these, and virtually every other harmful act perpetrated against human wellbeing and the planet, are actually symptoms of fear, and more specifically fear of mortality.

Bear with me, and while you are mulling this over I want to introduce one more bit of information that I think will help:

If this sounds like a mouthful of environmental-psychological jargon, you’re right. But what this means is that if we are to develop truly sustainable societies, human dignity—fair, just, equitable, peaceful, safe, and tolerant human experience—must be at the heart of our decisions about water, food, biodiversity, energy, commerce, etc. If we do not anchor our actions for sustainability in the resolution of factors degrading human dignity then anything we attempt toward sustainability will eventually fail.

To approach much less achieve holistically sustainable societies requires cooperation. Cooperation entails integration of thoughts, values, perceptions, fears, and aspirations as expressed and experienced at the lot, block, and neighbourhood scales of our towns and cities, across our farms and factories, watersheds and forests. In general we must take into consideration with every step the conditions of people, places and spaces where we live, work, and play.

To participate at this level of cooperation necessitates that we accept personal limits, that we are interdependent, that we are all dependent upon and vulnerable to the same life support systems, need the same basic resources, and that resource exploitation is nothing more than externalization of “want” (not need) at the cost of human dignity.

To cooperate necessitates that we accept the reality of finiteness; that Earth’s resources and life support systems are limited.

Terror management theorists tell us that at unconscious levels the very consideration of finiteness frightens us, even terrifies us. Why? Because comprehending (rather than simply intellectualizing) Earth—our home, a place that in so many ways seems larger than life—is finite forces recognition that we too are finite; that is mortal. You see where I am going.

Terror management research also tells us that when we look forward into the uncertainty of the future coupled with the certainty of finiteness one of two processes is generally but not exclusively set into motion: recalcitrance (deny and distract) or reconciliation (resolve and evolve). Mainstream and industry media, and “conservative” campaigns are among those most heavily invested in the former. They take the tiniest margin of error in a study or finest disagreement among scientists, and expand these into colossal arguments in denial of climate change and our responsibility for it, of peak oil, and global water scarcity; all the while encouraging profligate consumerism.

You may be asking “Who in their right mind, given overwhelming evidence pertaining to each of these calamitous phenomena, would deny the reality of our predicament?”

It is important to remember that when fear overtakes us, or when we give ourselves over to fear, we are not in our right, that is logical, sensible, and reasonable mind; we are terrified. When terror grips us our midbrain takes the wheel, and our consciousness descends into fight or flight, kill or be killed, it’s us or them, etc. Hence the remarkable effectiveness of fear messaging, hate radio, and in general the vilification of others with different skin colour, world views, and cultures.

Put another way, those championing denial of our local and global predicament and promoting derision of those seeking reconciliation and evolution are doing so to suppress awareness of their own finiteness, and their efforts to do so (ads, campaign platforms, media, etc.) are attractive to others seeking the same psychological “protection”. In essence it is a positive feedback loop that promotes self-destruction.

This is a good place to stop and quickly address the belief held by many that our unsustainable behaviour results from a genetic disposition to self-destruct. First, think about what we’ve just discussed, and contrast the behaviour of those driven destructively by fear with that of the countless individuals across the globe that are devoting their life’s work, even their very lives, to reconciling human experience person-to-person and to Earth as whole. It is far more likely, and research supports this, that rather than being genetically disposed to self-destruct we have been, and are allowing ourselves to be, socioculturally conditioned to forego beneficial and rational cognitive processes that would allow us to be informed and motivated by our fears, rather than to engage in unsustainable midbrain reactivity. Media fear messaging has and continues to fuel this this behaviour.

“I was afraid not to”

Kathleen Taylor and Annalee Lamoreaux (See for example “Teaching with the Brain in Mind”, 2008) renowned researchers in knowledge development, report that while we typically take what we know (and what we prefer to know), and apply this to current issues and future plans—you’ve heard the saying ‘history repeats itself’—we can also learn from the future. Taylor and Lamoreaux’s research reveals that we can learn from what we need to know by seeking the knowledge we need to create a sustainable future—resilient, healthier, brighter, and more peaceful—that is if we dare to do so.

Louise Buck, David Edmunds, Eva Wollenberg, David Holmgren (See for example “Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Climate Change”, 2009), and Adam Kahane (See for example “Solving Tough Problems”, 2007) among others are experts in implementation of prosocial change (i.e., holistic sustainability) programs the successes of which lend support to findings by Taylor and Lamoreaux. However, each of these experts, along with many others in the field, myself included, report in various ways that once attention is turned to factors threatening our wellbeing we have only begun the work of sustainability. Facilitating action and especially sustaining action is our greatest challenge as fears mount in the form of personal doubt, naysayers, and the near-countless challenges of being change agents in a society largely bent on believing no change is necessary; that is no natural limits exist.

Have you been inspired by a cause, had an idea as to how that cause can be met, felt the initial surge of motivation and excitement only to experience internal and external voices asserting a host of reasons why it is likely an impossible cause? Did you feel disillusioned, frustrated, angry, called for help to keep you going, felt more determined than ever…? If your answer is ‘yes’ then you understand the power of fear to inhibit and motivate.

Lily Yeh walked into the burned-out neighbourhoods of North Philadelphia looking forward through the fear of what was into a future of what could be for the common good.

So can each of us if we use fear to inform rather than freeze and through our aspirations see what is necessary to create sustainable society rather than the one that we would inherit from the backward-reaching, mortality-blind status quo.

Ron Chandler has worked in various fields of environmental science including: research and education in lake, stream, groundwater, and fisheries; environmental monitoring technology development, and taught urban ecology and sustainability in the Graduate School of Architecture, University of South Florida. He is President and Cofounder of Conservation Initiative for the Asian Elephant, and is completing a doctorate in psychology at Walden University where his speciality is the psychology of sustainability.